


it might be you, who resembles me

by mangozaya



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Neighbors, Developing Relationship, Lee Jeno is a Panicked Gay, M/M, Minor Huang Ren Jun/Na Jaemin, Mutual Pining, POV Alternating, Recreational Drug Use, Sweet Mark Lee (NCT), What's The Opposite of a Meet-Cute?, happy birthday bee !!, mature rating in later chapters, this will be too short to be a slow burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-03
Updated: 2020-12-03
Packaged: 2021-03-10 02:21:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,236
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27866786
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mangozaya/pseuds/mangozaya
Summary: Mark Lee is a little bit of everything that Jeno finds wonderful.
Relationships: Lee Jeno/Mark Lee, Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Comments: 1
Kudos: 19





	it might be you, who resembles me

**Author's Note:**

  * For [roseyong](https://archiveofourown.org/users/roseyong/gifts).



> to bee ♡ in place of a hug, please accept this lil chaptered fic as your birthday present from me to you ♡ youre endlessly wonderful, and i hope this small piece conveys the endearment i try to keyboard smash at you on the daily

“You might want to look into another _humble abode_ , because this one clearly isn’t cutting it.”

Jeno faintly sniffs, but inevitably agrees as Jaemin’s mutter is lost somewhere around the noise coming from the opposite apartment, the vibration of a particularly sharp speaker thrumming the beginnings of some late 90s remix that might have been a respectable choice if it were not blasting at 2am.

“I’m serious, you could just move in with me–” Jaemin pauses a moment to quirk an eyebrow at nothing, before doubling-back slightly on his words, “–well actually, Renjun said we can’t have a puppy until he graduates, but he never said anything about _you_.”

“Right, I’ll keep that in mind.”

Jeno keeps his tone light, but his foot taps restlessly as he swipes a hand into empty air, batting away the literal sound from his neighbors with a metaphorical _slap_ , knowing full well that he _could_ walk right out his door and across the hallway to confront the noise, but Jaemin was unwilling to accompany him, and Jeno can't quite bring himself to go alone. Jaemin prefers a milder method of, ‘Hey, if you just ignore it, it’ll go away, right?’

Ignoring _it_ has been going terribly. For the last month of Jeno’s time in his new residence, the volume from his neighbors has been just as regular as Jaemin’s weekly visits or Jeno’s daily headaches after work— his new job has been equally frustrating, with his boss working him to the bone and his coworkers being as functional as Jeno’s broken water faucet.

Other than all that, he’s doing just fine. His _Mastery in Computer Science’_ degree hangs above his fireplace mantle, and he’s _absolutely_ getting his footing into the industry that his education promised. He _definitely_ doesn’t come home everyday to slump down on his couch and pass out for hours at a time, only to wake to a base-boosted rendition of some distantly familiar artist.

(If Jeno’s being honest with himself, he does appreciate his line of work and a full-time job right out of university, but he also thinks it’s fair to expect a few hours of silence after roughly eight hours mindlessly crunching numbers at a desk.)

He insists this much to Jaemin.

“Seriously, you don’t have to live here, you can always move back in with me. It’ll be like old times!” Jaemin’s enthusiasm is a stark contrast to the rising tension in Jeno’s temples, and they both jump at a sudden yell of apparent enthusiasm from between the walls.

“If I didn’t know any better, someone’s being murdered.” Jeno snips, conveniently ignoring Jaemin’s endless request to be roommates again. Jaemin’s heart is never in the wrong place, but Renjun deserves a space for only him and his boyfriend. Jeno already feels like enough of an intruder with how often he needs to slip to his friend’s apartment to get a decent night’s sleep.

Jaemin only offers because he’s a sweetheart, but he consciously understands that Jeno needs to adapt to his new space; Jeno can’t rely on his childhood friend forever.

Jaemin instead splays his hands in a sort-of gestured sympathy, moving to clap Jeno on the shoulder.

“Maybe you’re right, it might be time to knock on their door.”

“Easier said than done,” Jeno huffs, but he’s already scripting the confrontation in his head.

Just as Jeno moves to get up from his stool, going to turn off his stove where late night pasta had been boiling for a short while, another loud _clang_ startles them from their hushed conversation, and Jeno groans into his hands, sinking his head down on the countertop, uselessly watching as minutes tick by on his kitchen timer.

Jaemin can’t help the faint laugh hidden behind his hands.

✿

With a new evening comes a new place for Jeno to run away to, and if there’s a few spaces in his apartment complex that Jeno can catch a break in, it’s between the severely lacking indoor gym or the recreation room of two ping pong tables and one broken television.

On this particular Thursday night, Jeno chooses to dangle his feet off the side stairs of the fire escape instead. There’s a rose-colored ambiance in the way the space offers a silence Jeno has come to endlessly wish for, but the suspicious mold growing in each stair corner does put a damp on whatever aesthetic he could possibly vouch for.

He also doesn’t account for the November chill to wrap itself so soundly into his light knitted sweater, but it’s thirty minutes too late to regret his choice of hideaway for the night. He digs his palms into the thinning pockets of his coat and rocks forward gently, waiting for his soft exhales to even out as he tries to not breathe in cold air.

It proves useless, and in ten minutes time, Jeno’s eyes slip closed as he leans his head against the rusted handle of the staircase, a slight tinge of metal strong in the air, but not enough to keep him from an ill-timed nap. The day washes over him in waves, but he doesn’t find himself as overwhelmed as he usually might be. He welcomes the silence, even if his feet are frozen numb and his nose runs every few minutes, but it’s well worth even an hour of peace away from his neighbors who really don’t understand the concept of ‘keeping the community volume to a comfortable decibel’. While Jaemin’s apartment promises warm blankets and Renjun’s cinnamon hot chocolate, Jeno really needs to find a routine in this new stage in his life, and he’s _got_ to stop living off of college ramen habits and endless coffee mugs piling in the sink, complete with a broken radiator that Jeno _really_ needs to call the landlord—

“Dude, are you like, good? I didn’t want to bother you but you–”

A voice unmistakably jars him from his nap. Jeno opens his eyes, blinking blearily, but his vision is blurry as he swears the cold has glued his eyelids shut. He feels a slight stinging as he tries to focus on the person standing before him, but the stranger is hopping from one foot to another in a seeming attempt to also stay warm, their hoodie several sizes too large and hanging loosely on their frame as they curiously peer at Jeno under half-lidded eyes.

Jeno slightly double takes. The stranger’s hoodie is a statement lime green, far too bright and festive for such a drab November evening, and Jeno’s head falls back into the warmth of his own sleeves.

“Oh, _shit_. I didn’t mean to wake you. I just got kinda worried, but I mean, it’s better safe than to be sorry, right?” Lime Green Hoodie stranger rapid-fires, and Jeno can barely process anything that’s being said. His brain could possibly be frozen with the open chill in the air. _Just how long was he asleep?_

“Not to be weird, but you were out cold for like, half an hour dude. I didn’t want to leave without waking you.”

 _Huh_. No wonder he could barely think through the cotton in his head. Jeno opens his mouth to test out how words feel on his tongue after shivering for close to an hour, but Lime Green Hoodie beats him, a nervous clip to his tone.

“Wait, not that I’ve been here watching you, I came back because I dropped something but then–”

“Hey, _relax_ , I just need a moment.” Jeno goes for an honest approach with this stranger, and it seems to work, because Lime Green Hoodie brightens up instantly and rocks back on his heels, “Yeah! No worries, I’m cool with a moment.”

The stranger’s patience is barely acknowledged because Jeno is busy taking his damn moment, breathing rapidly and rubbing his thighs harshly for any circulation to return to his legs. He flaps his jacket before zipping it up to his chin, ducking into the felt-lined interior, and finally looks back up at the person before him who is busy chewing his lower lip, releasing it with a _pop_ as he catches Jeno’s eye.

“Thanks for waking me, I guess.” Jeno starts awkwardly, but the stranger doesn’t seem very miffed, scrunching his ( _adorably! button!_ ) nose with a sniffle before nodding back with a smile that catches Jeno off guard. It’s equally endearing and entirely _pretty_ , but Jeno isn’t willing to dwell on that. His frozen ears give him something else to worry about, and _how was this stranger so cheery this late at night?_

“Yeah, no worries, we have to look out for our neighbors, and all that.”

 _Neighbors?_ Jeno squints. “Wait, have we met before?”

“Oh, I just assumed you lived here? Are you visiting someone?” For someone who looks equally as frigid with how his nose is rosy and pink, Lime Green Hoodie is far too comfortable to drag out their conversation.

Jeno feels only slightly bad. If he wasn’t as cold and grumpy as he was this particular midnight, he might have entertained the stranger longer, but he just needs to get himself back into his apartment and under several blankets if he wants to avoid calling out sick for the next week.

“I live here, just moved in, but–” a cold tremor ghosts along Jeno’s spine, and he winces, “– _fuck_ , listen I’m sorry, I need to get inside, but it was nice meeting you.” Jeno raises an eyebrow at the stranger, and luckily they catch on.

“Mark. Mark Lee, I live on the second floor, maybe I’ll see you around?”

“Yeah, definitely,” but Jeno is only half listening, lifting himself to his feet and willing away the slowly forming cold-induced headache in the pulse of his temples. He gives a weak smile to _Mark_ _Lee_ and distantly catches on that this still-stranger’s disheveled black hair and high cheekbones are distractingly attractive, but it’s a momentary observation that fades into a simple, _I’m literally too cold for this_.

As Jeno unsteadily clamors across the foothold of the staircase to reach his own apartment on the second floor, Mark bids him a distant goodnight that echoes between metal stairs and bounces off of Jeno.

He uneventfully calls in sick the next morning.

✿

_If your friends jumped off a bridge, would you follow?_ goes the old elementary saying, and Mark’s heard it enough from parents and teachers to understand the metaphoric meaning.

If Mark Lee is being honest with himself though, he clearly never listened.

He’s _literally_ jumped off several small bridges with his friends, strung along with nothing else but a strong fear of missing out— _sue him_. Sure, the bridges were no more than a few meters high, lining the width of a small creek with far too many stones to be considered safe, but several feet of frigid water isn’t anything that Mark couldn't handle.

Unfortunately, he can count the number of times he’s blindly followed his friends just in the past month, ticking them off with all ten fingers and ten toes. It’s nineteen times too many.

Donghyuck wants to go skinny-dipping at four-in-the-morning in the middle of November? Mark will give a long-suffering sigh into the phone line, click the _end call_ button with a little too much force, but they both know he’s going to grab his car keys momentarily and pick up Chenle and Lucas on the way.

Chenle decides that a Tuesday mid-afternoon is the perfect time to stress bake several dozen brownies, specifically in Mark’s apartment? Mark will dutifully pick up several packs of flour on the way back from work, buying an extra pound of sugar for good measure, and entertain Chenle’s constant, “alright, but are you _sure_ they taste okay? Do I need to change the recipe?”

Lucas is somehow the most cliche of them all. What did Mark do when Lucas rang him up two weeks ago, announcing that they _had_ to get matching tattoos? Mark had to admit that Lucas’s reasoning was rather sound; it’s not everyday that your bro-ship—“it’s a _friend_ ship Lucas, they’ve already invented a word for this”—turns a decade old. Mark stumbled back into his apartment hours later with Lucas, supporting tiny coordinating dinosaurs on their ankles. His baby brontosaurus is admittedly cute, and Lucas’s tyrannosaurus rex is more endearing than scary, and it’s only sound because Lucas never grew out of his dinosaur phase from years ago. Mark gets it, he still wishes he could grow a tail and properly swim among fishes as a glittering cerulean mermaid.

Impulsive actions aside, Mark fully acknowledges one core element of himself: he has _very_ little control over his friends, and it’s none too evident as it is now.

He’s supporting his own solo cup, draped across his couch—mimicking an amorphous cat being swallowed by the cushions a little too well—and lazily turns his head to watch Chenle grow more frantic with each kitchen cabinet he digs through.

“You know, the world’s not going to end if you don’t find that second handle.”

“I swear it was stashed here-” Chenle breath catches, before he utters a low _fuck_. “That’s the last shelf, I don’t-”

He breaks off, frustrated.

“You know, you could help me.” Chenle glares at Donghyuck, who has started to file his nails, an extensive array of polish balanced dangerously on the couch’s arm, a few beads of a previous glitter red stained into the cream leather. The couch is really an unfortunate color, but Mark had nearly skidded his car last year in an attempt to pick it up from where it lay abandoned on the side of the road—only a messily tacked note with a ‘ _please take me_ ’ was pierced into the seat cushion—and Mark frequently reminds everyone that he saved a thousand dollars that day.

On this couch, old and worn in display, Donghyuck is still lounged out and unbothered.

From the other side of the room, Lucas snorts. “Honestly Hyuck, he’s going to kick you any second now. Play nice and find his vodka.”

“I _am_ nice.”

Mark takes a long suffering sip of something Lucas mixed for him (seltzer! cranberry juice! something else that’s faintly acidic!) and watches his friends with fond exasperation, distantly noting that Lucas might need to be put to bed soon as his friend trips over nothing, slamming his palms into the wall to stabilize himself, muttering lowly about _Mark’s stupid floor_. Mark grins above the rim of his cup.

Mark endlessly loves them, even if they bring in monthly noise complaints and thousands of requests that Mark can only accept because he’s carved out weekly time in his pretty post-it note schedule exclusively for the three currently seated in his living room. He feels mildly bad for his neighbors, _really_ , but the noise complaints have toned down since Donghyuck switched from blaring music through speakers to blaring music through his _phone_ speaker.

“Seriously, we _can’t_ have finished my entire second bottle‒” Chenle’s got his most deadly version of puppy-dog-eyes on full display, and Mark can faintly guess where this is going. “‒Mark! Can you drive us to the store?”

Mark frowns, eyes glazed and lip burning slightly from the residual stain of alcohol. “I’m also drinking? Of course I can’t.”

“We didn’t designate a sober friend? Damn.”

Donghyuck shrugs from the couch, both sets of painted nails nearly dry as he blows gently on them, “No one called dibs, that’s on you guys.”

His voice is slurred and barely discernible above the volume blaring from his phone, but Mark is far too comfortable to ask Hyuck to lower the noise, and he instead folds himself even further into his cushions, one eye closed but the other open in a lazy effort to avoid fully dozing into the arm rest. He drifts off moments later, not entirely aware of his surrounds and head too caught up in a haze to recall how long it’s been since he’s had a clear view of his friends, but just as Chenle returns to the living room resigned about his missing handle, there’s a sudden _thump_ from just over his shoulder, and Mark blinks awake in time to watch a slow-motion of Lucas free falling to the ground. Chenle snorts from somewhere on Mark’s left, and he can’t help but agree.

Lucas’s fall is a _little_ comical, but mostly concerning.

He had somehow methodically fallen over despite having no clear control of his limbs, but Lucas ends up slumped over an old cushioned bean bag, and Mark lets out a long-held exhale, thumbing his temples with his free hand and lifting himself with a slight grunt. With a sigh of his own, an already-risen Donghyuck catches Mark by the waist as he sways in an effort to play the mostly-sober, not-quite-drunk friend.

“Mark, you might want to consider sitting down. I got him.”

Mark gives a belated nod to no one in particular, but as he moves to sit down, another noise breaks through Donghyuck’s speakers, and Chenle groans with a snippy, “what _now._ ”

Mark’s door _thuds_ once more, rattling on it’s less-than secure hinges as someone makes their presence known with uncoordinated knocks, a little too harsh to be mistaken as friendly.

“The landlord again? What do they want now?” Chenle squares his shoulders in a less than threatening stance, curling his lip in annoyance, “they came by last week.”

“They’re doing their job, let's not give them shit.” Mark mumbles, no bite to his tone as he shuffles to his door, knocking his hood back from where it’s balanced poorly on his head. Mark turns back to eye his friends, nodding when Donghyuck hoists Lucas up by the armpits. Mark softly _clicks_ his door handle open as he calls back, eye’s faintly rimmed with red and half-lidded. “He can sleep in my bed, I’ll get the door‒”

The rest of Mark’s sentence dissipates into thin air, replaced with a barely recognizable _oh shit,_ and Mark fumbles his hold on the door handle, sliding down with a harsh buckle to his knee. He recovers quickly, as much as his current clumsy reflexes will allow, and stares straight at the narrowed eyes of a tight lipped stranger before him. Or at least, Mark imagines so. The stranger is hidden behind a mask, his hoodie covering the other half of his face.

It might be the dim hall-lights, or maybe it’s the stream of artificial neon pink from his own apartment, but what little is visible of the stranger’s face is painted in a blurry sprinkle of light spots, and Mark is once again reminded that he _really_ needs to watch how much he’s drinking, because the room is slightly spinning, but the person before him _isn’t_ moving. It’s more disorienting than anything, and Mark either needs a tall glass of water or a solid nap.

Mark brings a hand up to his ear, gently tugging on his small silver hoop out of awkwardness, and goes to immediately apologize for what he expects is going to be a noise complaint, this time coming directly from a disgruntled neighbor instead of the landlord.

He opens his mouth to take accountability, lowing his hand to press against the peeling wood of the doorframe, trying to blink his eyes into some form of clarity even with the smoke clouding the better part of his—

“Wait, you’re that‒ shit, _Mark Lee?_ ”

**Author's Note:**

> a thank you to Paper, who helped me with a major (!!) plot point
> 
> and of course, here's extra love for bee, and another happy happy happy birthday ♡


End file.
